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Outlook 2003 blank email body

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by barkleynr

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I've searched high and low for a solution. Tried every one i've come across and nothing works consistently. I can recieve emails fine, but when sending, body is blank. Attachments go through as do the subject lines. The thing is, SOMETIMES the emails go through without a problem??? However, this only applies to users that run Outlook. All commercial email providers recieve full emails. What would cause a few emails to get through while the vast majority are blank for Outlook users? Tried plain text, rich text, HTML, applied sp2, restarted servers, and I am at wits end. Any and all suggestions are welcome and appreciated.

13 replies

by rajan.pradhan

Hi

I've experienced the same issue. I have narrowed this down to email which is generated by an outlook plugin we are using, and only if the mail is edited after generation and before sending. Tis a weird issue, I know it is a known bug with some plugins eg PGP, see here http://www.123together.com/Support/Outlook_2003_email_blank.htm. Hope this may help you.

Kind Regards

Rajan Pradhan
ICT Systems Administrator
rajan.pradhan@eniaustralia.com.au

by jarek.mitek

I have the same issue here. We are on Outlook 2003 SP2. We even setup a trap for the "on send" event and monitor the size of the body. But it seems that the body is deleted sometime after this.

Can anyone explain where and how this may happen? Is it that the mail server is doing this?

We send out a lot of emails to mailing lists. If you send it directly there, it may appear blank (to clients and in our sent items).
But when you send the email to yourself first, the forward it, this doesn't happen. Also the emails are in HTML.

Thanks in advance!

by api984

PLain text stays inside message. If you did a compare on the message using a diff you can clearly see that after text/html message or HTML was STRIPPED out. Its got to be an error in Outlook.

by ecamp71

after reinstalling office and sp3 failed to correct the issue, troubleshooting lead me to tie the problem to the user profile. The problem didnt exist when I logged on to the users desktop.

I got around this problem by giving the user local admin priviledge to the desktop. Perhaps power user would have worked as well.

by nickcardwell

We have a user who is having the same problems.

Random emails, in sent items its fine, the receiver gets the correct subject in email, but with a blank attachment.

xp with sp3 and office 2003 with sp3.

by phil.blackburn

I've wasted hours on this problem and can't afford more time right now so in the end I've been forced to given users access to webmail service!!
I've go no solution but here's what we have learnt so far..

We send out many plain text emails and that are almost identical.. the only differences being in a customers name and address and a link the the customers details on a https site which is formatted like this..
https://OUR_SERVER.com/Link.aspx?t=c&u=181c8f9f-c2e6-4e79-b4dd-f2d575bd8ff3

[Apart from the server name, the above link is an example of one from a failing email]

A small group of users received some of these emails with blank content.

I say blank, in actual fact it contains just a single > character. This character does not appear in any part of the orginal plain text mail content

If we later resend the email (not forward; but generate a new email with the exact same content) then the recipient gets an empty body again.
When sending the same email to another user, the body is complete.

To me this suggests there is something in the content of the email that is causing outlook to remove the body and its that single > character that I'm curious about. As we know outlook will convert links into a clickable link and I suspect it is this process that it resulting in the body being wiped out.

by thumbsup2

If your copy of the "sent" email is not blank, it's not Outlook doing it. If the receiver's email program (or web based email provider) filters their email, it's their settings, not yours.

Your best bet to reach all recipients is to send all email as plain text. That way, non-Outlook users can read them. As plain text, Outlook should make links clickable. The recipient's email may still strip the clickability of the links when it is received. But, at least they can read it.

It's all for security, since no one should ever click a link in an email they've received. They should always copy/paste from the email into a new browser window.

by api984

i ran a xxdiff on linux on messages that are bad and ok.

html gets deleted. plain text stays but it is not displayed. I also know that nod32 AV has problems with this. But we uninstalled it.

OS:Windows Server 2003 SBS
Mail : Exchange 2000 SP2 6.5
Outlook: 2003 11.5608.5606 (no SP i think)

still no solution for this i think....

by api984

That's possible too. But what if I say that it worked before and now it does not. It could be that the receiving end UPGRADED security.

Seems that plain text and Attachments are gonna save the day.

by shakil.talha

Hi,

So the problem is when an email message is generated from an external program and is saved in drafts for savig - the body appears blank but when you send it the body appears in your sent items folder!!

This happens when you have selected Word 2003(why? i dont know) as your email editor simple uncheck the option (tools>options>mail format> uncheck both options (use word 2003 as an editor...))

The body will appear in drafts too now. But default outlook editor really sucks .. if you use rich text then you can do formatting but spell check does not work.

One solution use outlook 2007

But i need a fix hope now that the problem is identified some one could help.

by api984

Body appers in Sent items correct.
When sent through Exchange and when the
recepient checks its Blank.
We use open office. Word is not used so these options are grayed out.

You can't rely on Outlook RTF mail format. other side has to use Outlook too.

Unless you convert rtf to html on the way out.

problem still not solved.

by barkleynr

I just stumbled across this old thread...we fixed the problem but that was 3 years ago! It had something to do with the HTML/plaintext settings in Exchange. I seem to recall MIME settings as well. Dunno exactly what we did, I think we just kept changing all those settings around until it worked. Hope this helps with future/current fails!!

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